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Tuesday, 23 April 2013

In Vivid Paint

Just a quick update... Things have been quite wonderful here in my world with the usual balance of endings and beginnings and new stuff and new plans. Amongst other things I've started putting the final pieces of the puzzle together for my upcoming trip to Scotland (4th-14th May). Pllleeeeease let the weather be beautiful! I was quite amazed by how quickly this trip booked up, to be honest; it made me think I really ought to go to Scotland more often, not least because I absolutely loved my last trip to Edinburgh. That said, there has been a cancellation and I am also doing my best to squeeze in any extra shoots people might want to arrange with me. I'm going to be in Edinburgh, Fife, Dundee, Perth, the Highlands, Glasgow, then back in Edinburgh. Do get in touch if you like the idea of having me pose for you and I'll see what I can do.

I've had some great shoots recently, including a commercial shoot for a jewellery company in London, some dance/movement work, and a shoot which partly involved wearing moss and twigs! I do love the variety. I've got lots in my 'to blog' folder, as always; it's overflowing, in fact, and I still find it so exciting to be able to share the work I'm featured in.

Another fun thing that happened recently was receiving a huge print of a painting by Nurhilal Harsa from Turkey, which I rolled out on my bedroom floor and gazed at in amazement. I imagine it will make a really good feature on the wall someday, as part of my quite eclectic collection of stuff.

The painting is based on an image shot for Digital Camera Magazine (full info here - it resulted in 14 pages and a front cover). The pictures here (sent initially to show me the painting) don't do justice to quite how vibrant and striking the colours are, in my opinion; the blues/greens in particular are very bold. If you click on the link above you can see Nurhilal Harsa's distinctive style. She says:

'A strong, secular, humanist art is critical for Turkey and art can help everybody challenge limitations of understanding and consciousness. Izmir is a magical city on the shores of the Aegean Sea. I throw open my windows every morning and both the sea and sky open their arms to me, welcoming the day. Every day the sea and the sky are different and also the same. They can be serene or tempestuous. They are moody, like me. My paintings are emotional and vibrant, colorful and expressive.'

I am often contacted by painters who wish to paint versions of the photographs I post online, or by those who already have.

Copyright is a funny thing. The images taken of me, by default, belong (along with associated rights) to the photographer/artist. (When I post them here, it is with permission.) I agree, on each individual occasion, to pose for a person on a particular time or location, for them to produce my likeness and use it in any (legal, non-defamatory, etc.) way they like. It is thereafter not my right to have a say in what derivative work may follow on from the exchange for which I have been compensated, or to which I have agreed. Therefore, I occasionally find (often after the event) that I have 'remotely' modelled for someone I have never met or made an agreement with...

I'm happy to be inspiring people - it's quite exciting to see the results, but I hope that good ethics can be remembered by those who use my likeness in this 'remote' way, and that for any kind of commercial use or public display/sale, permission must be sought beforehand, from the copyright holder (I can usually put you in touch with them; it's no problem at all!), and that my role as the subject ought to be respected too. And yes, being sent a physical print really does make things a lot sweeter, from my point of view. :-)

...So thank you, Nurhilal Harsa, for sending me a copy of your beautiful painting, all the way from Turkey. I really do appreciate it! I also hope other artists might be inspired to send on copies of their work to the models too, where possible and appropriate; it might be appreciated far more than you realise. :-)

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N E W S ! ! !

NEW 'FAERIE GARDEN' PRINT BOOK ! ! !

A print book is now available for purchase, thanks to the kindness and generosity of the artists involved! If you agree that physical prints are far better to look at than online, virtual ones, do read all about it. Each purchase includes a donation to Amnesty. Treat yourself! Thank you.

Please email me directly at ellarosemuse@live.co.uk with any enquiries, to make a booking or if you'd like me to get in touch when travelling to your area.

Visitors since 13th July 2010

Bouguereau, 'Evening Mood'

Velasquez - The Rokeby Venus

J. W. Waterhouse, 'The Lady of Shalott'

Rossetti, 'Venus Verticordia'

John Grimshaw, 'Iris'

J. W. Waterhouse, 'My Sweet Rose'

Guerin, 'L'aurore et Cephale'

Botticelli, 'The Birth of Venus'

J. W. Waterhouse, 'Psyche Opening the Golden Box'

Pamela Hanson, 'Bis'

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,by a mystic golden light.My head soaked in river water.I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They calleda horse out of the woodland."Take her there, through the desert shores."They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.The banquet for the shadows.Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.Came upon the headdress.It was gilded, dark and golden.The children sang.I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my handsmells like the feel of an old school desk,the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scentmy armpits sound a bass note strongas the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharpas the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the napeof my neck, just where you might bendyour head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleetof tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.